Creed Number One for Sixth Week

Observing an annual tradition, the nation's album charts went from ho-ho to ho-hum the week following the Christmas blitz, as each of the top eighty albums sold less copies than it did the week before. Creed best survived the sales deflation, as their third album, Weathered, topped the SoundScan chart for the sixth week in a row with sales of 398,000 -- 130,000 more than the second-place finisher, Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory (up from Number Seven the previous week).

Weathered has now moved more than 3.5 million copies in its six weeks in stores, and it's rapidly gaining on the band's debut album, 1997's My Own Prison, which has sold over 5.7 million copies to date. The new album still has quite a bit of work to do to become the best-selling Creed album, competing with 1999's Human Clay, which is at Number Eighty-five this week and has moved more than 10 million copies.

This week's big chart gainer was Ludacris' Word of Mouf, which jumped from Number Sixteen to Number Four, selling 228,000 copies, while the big fader was Garth Brooks' Scarecrow, which fell from Number Three to Number Fourteen, selling 155,000 copies. There were no new chart entries in the Top 100.

This week's Top Ten: Creed's Weathered; Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory; Now That's What I Call Music! 8; Ludacris' Word of Mouf; Nickelback's Silver Side Up; Usher's 8701; Enya's A Day Without Rain; Ja Rule's Pain Is Love; Nas' Stillmatic; and Pink's Missundaztood.

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Song Stories

“Is It True”

Brenda Lee | 1964

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."

More Song Stories entries »

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